Under the Trees and Elsewhere | Page 7

she offered, and in the first moment of intercourse she
struck in men that lofty note of sovereignty which has never ceased to
thrill the race with mysterious tones of power and prophecy. Men have
stood erect and fearless in the presence of the most awful revelations of
the forces of Nature, affirming by their very attitude a supremacy of
spirit which no preponderance of power can overshadow. Face to face
through all his history man has stood with Nature, and to each
generation she has opened some new page of her inexhaustible story.
Beginning in the hardest toil for the most material rewards, this
fellowship has steadily added one province of knowledge and intimacy
after another, until it has become inclusive of the most delicate and
hidden recesses of character as well as those which are obvious and
primary. In response to spirits which have continually come into a
closer contact with her life, Nature has added to her gifts of food and
wine, poetry and art, far-reaching sciences, occult wisdoms and skills;
she has invited the greatest to become her ministers, and has rewarded
their unselfish service by sharing with them the mighty forces that
sleep and awake at her bidding; one after another the poets of truest gift
have forsaken the beaten paths of cities and men, and found along her

untrodden ways the vision that never fades; her voice, now that men
begin to understand it again as their forefathers understood it, is a voice
of worship. So, from their first work for food and shelter, men have
steadily won from Nature gifts of insight and knowledge and prophecy,
until now the mightiest secrets are whispered by the trees to him who
listens, and the winds sometimes take up the burden of prophecy and
sing of a fellowship in which all truth shall be a common possession.
As I walk along the old highway, the deepening shadows touch the
familiar landscape with mystery; one landmark after another vanishes
until the lights in the scattered farm-houses gleam like reflected
constellations. A deep silence fills the great heavens and broods over
the wide earth; all things have become dim and strange; and yet I feel
no loneliness in the midst of this star-lit solitude. The heavens shining
over me, and the scattered household fires declare to me that fellowship
of light in which Nature holds out her hand to man and leads him, step
by step, to the unspeakable splendours of her central sun.
Chapter V
The Open Fields
One of the sights upon which my eyes rest oftenest and with deepest
content is a broad sweep of meadow slowly climbing the western sky
until it pauses at the edge of a noble piece of woodland. It is a
playground of wind and flowers and waving grasses. There are, indeed,
days when it lies cold and sad under inhospitable skies, but for the most
part the heavens are in league with cloud and sun to protect its charm
against all comers. When the turf is fresh, all the promise of summer is
in its tender green; a little later, and it is sown thick with daisies and
buttercups; and as the breeze plays upon it these frolicsome flowers,
which have known no human tending, seem to chase each other in
endless races over the whole expanse. I have seen them run breathlessly
up the long slope, and then suddenly turn and rush pell-mell down
again. If the wind had only stopped for a moment its endless gossip
with the leaves, I am sure I should have heard the gleeful shouts, the
sportive cries, of these vagrant flowers whose spell is rewoven over

every generation of children, and whose unstudied beauty and joy recall,
with every summer, some of the clews which most of us have lost in
our journey through life. Even as I write, I see the white and yellow
heads tossing to and fro in a mood of free and buoyant being, which
has for me, face to face with the problems of living, an unspeakable
pathos.
What a depth of tender colour fills the arch of heaven as it bends over
this playground of the blooming and beauty-laden forces of nature! The
great summer clouds, shaping their courses to invisible harbours across
the trackless aerial sea, love to drop anchor here and slowly trail their
mighty shadows, vainly groping for something that shall make them
fast. The winds, that have come roaring through the woodlands, subdue
their harsh voices and linger long in their journey across this sunny
expanse. It is true, they sing no lullabies as in the hollow under the hill
where they themselves often fall asleep, but the music to which they
move has a magical cadence of joy in it, and sets our